


Pleasure Principle

by gaylancesweets



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, anyways Sweets is gay and things are weird basically, so i opted to not put it in the tag, this is teeechnically swaisy but it's not a very positive interpretation of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 07:44:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10157816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaylancesweets/pseuds/gaylancesweets
Summary: The biggest thing the two of them have in common is that they’re both alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> just a messy little ficlet i originally threw onto my tumblr, gaylancesweets, whose url is roughly 50% of what you need to know about this fic
> 
> warnings for mentions of abuse and possible internalized homophobia on sweets's part if you squint (haha...squint)

The biggest thing the two of them have in common is that they’re both alone.

And maybe that’s not a great thing to have in common; maybe she should be less willing to overlook the way he hesitates before he kisses her, the catch in his voice when he says that he loves her (it’s not that she doesn’t believe him, but sometimes she wonders if they both have the same definition of the word). But he’s handsome and a good piano player and he doesn’t ask her about her family on their first date, and she’s smart enough to know that it’s because he doesn’t want her to ask the same of him. Instead, she talks about bone dating methods and he talks about Dream Theater. Silently, they bond over the elephant in the room.

One night, while they’re eating takeout and talking through an episode of _The X-Files_ , he offhandedly mentions that he buried his parents in Florida just weeks before leaving their graves behind for his current job. She can tell by the way he says it that he’s trying to be subtle about it, that she should just leave it alone and move the conversation along like he wants. But the image of him picking out gravestones and scrambling to pay funeral bills makes her chest ache, so she blurts out the story of the drunk driver that took her family in one stupid and impulsive swerve. Then, when she’s done with that, she tells him about the aunt that everyone told her she wasn’t allowed to hate, because who cares if she screams and throws dishes when she took in your sad little orphan ass?

And he listens, like he always does, and afterwards he thanks her for trusting him enough to confide in him, praises her for her openness in that stilted therapist way that seems to bring him so much social comfort. But he doesn’t tell her the full story behind his own loss and the most selfish part of her can’t help but feel cheated, like she gave and received nothing in return.

She feels the same way when they finally sleep together for the first time after weeks of hesitation on his part, when she presses her fingers like wet cement into his back and feels the ridges on his shoulders, thick and unmistakably unnatural. She feels him tense beneath her hands, but he doesn’t stop or ask her to stop touching them, so she doesn’t. She just kisses his neck and holds onto him the best she can.

Afterwards, when they’re lying next to each other in the dark and the air is full of that thrumming energy that only manifests in the middle of the night, he tells her that he doesn’t want to talk about it, but that it wasn’t his parents. His parents were good people. She had her aunt and he had foster care, he says, and he’ll leave it at that.

She presses her head to his chest and tells him that he deserved better. He responds by saying that they both did.

As the months go by, part of her knows that they’re not soulmates, knows that there’s something more than a sad childhood and a desire for privacy that keeps him from giving himself over to her completely. But she loves him and he loves her, even if he doesn’t know how to love her. And when they’re together, they’re not alone.

That has to count for something.


End file.
